Eshkol Nevo - World Cup Wishes

‘What’s going to become of you’ was the regular question he asked me from the living room armchair as he cut a pear or an apple into small, precise slices — but at the wedding, I thought I saw a new, more burning question in his eyes: how could I have lost him Ya’ara?

From the minute she set foot, in her bouncy walk, into our house in Haifa, he was captivated by her. Two hours later, at the dining room table, the unbelievable happened, and for the first time in his life, he told a joke. She laughed at his joke. She rolled with laughter. And he blushed. I’d never before seen him turn red with anything but anger.

Then he asked her if she were cold. Perhaps she wanted him to turn on the heating? Or get her a blanket? Or perhaps one of Marilyn’s sweaters?

I’m fine, it’s very pleasant here, she said with a laugh, but now I know where your son got his gentlemanliness from.

Later they became engrossed in a conversation on how wonderful British theatre was and how Israeli theatre couldn’t hold a candle to it (my father worked as a stage hand in the West End? Exactly when was that? How hadn’t I known that till now?), and when they broke into a duet from an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, my mother and I decided we’d had enough and stood up to take the dishes into the kitchen.

What was that supposed to be?! I asked her.

You know how your father always wanted a daughter, she said, supplying the convenient, pleasing explanation, as usual.

Yes, I know, I said, and thought: perhaps a daughter really would have freed that man of all his tightness and restraint, and I–I would have enjoyed the leftovers.

(Once, on the way home from grade school, I was caught in the Haifa rain, which falls more densely and in bigger drops than the rain in Tel Aviv. I didn’t have an umbrella, and by the time I got home, my clothes were stuck to my skin like a diver’s suit. It was a Tuesday, the day the whole city closes up at noon, and he was home. When I opened the door, his face broke into an oh-my-God expression, but his mouth said only, it’s a bit rainy today, isn’t it? Then he sat me down in front of the big kerosene heater that broke down at the beginning of every winter, peeled off my layers of clothes carefully, without hurting me, and wiped my whole body with the thick green towel he fetched from the bathroom. His movements were long and measured, and his large hands were gentle. Not a single wet spot was left on my body when he was finished, and yet, even though I was already burning from being so close to the heater, he insisted on wrapping another large towel around me, so that, God forbid, I wouldn’t catch pneumonia or anything like that.

For weeks afterwards, I’d deliberately forget my umbrella on Tuesdays, in the hope that it would rain.)

*

Come here, he dug his nails into my arm during one of my stops at their table, let me introduce you to Yanke’le Richter.

A guy my age, wearing a suit and tie, shook my hand so hard that it hurt.

Yanke’le works in hi-tech industries, my father explained. He tells me they have a special programme for people who want to change career, like you.

Like me?

You know, the ones who studied lying on the grass, my father said, winking at Yanke’le Richter, and went on, I told him that you’d probably want to hear details about this programme.

What I wanted was to get away from there. Very much. Or, alternatively, to jump into the artificial lake and turn into something else, like in Metamorphoses : a swan, a water lily, a man with a purpose. And perhaps I would have gathered enough despair to jump into the lake if it hadn’t been for Ofir’s touch meditation.

There really was electricity in his hands.

All he did was put his palms on my shoulders. OK, he might have moved them a bit. And touched the back of my neck at some point. But no more than that. In any case, when I stood up from the treatment table, I felt the bitterness that had been weighing down on me all evening disintegrate, my body became light and an oceanic love of the world rose up in me.

Man, I said and hugged Ofir, you have to open a clinic. You’re really good at this.

Really? he said, smiling. You have no idea how important it is to me to hear that from you. I mean, hearing it from strangers is not the same as hearing it from friends.

Your boyfriend is phenomenal! I said to Maria, to underline what I’d said.

I know he is, she said and looked at Ofir with moist eyes (perhaps it was the treatment that influenced my perception of reality, but for a minute, it seemed as if their love had a material presence, that I could actually see it floating in the air between them).

I’m happy for you, Bro, I said after a short silence.

I know, he said.

And we didn’t have to say any more. Because it was clear to both of us that beneath that happiness were sad, past moments in Ofir’s life that we had been through together. The nervous breakdown, his father’s death. But it was actually those moments that gave the happiness its validity.

Will the two of you come to dance later? I asked.

Of course, he said.

And after a few songs, he and Maria and the girl joined us and we all danced together in a non-circular circle, winding around each other in figures of eight, touching lightly, cheering, sweating love, drinking as we moved, dripping onto our shirts, hoisting Churchill and Ya’ara onto our shoulders and letting them join together in a kiss, doing a perfect imitation of Amichai’s famous, one-and-only dance move — patting his stomach with his hand — screeching with dry throats, ‘Shimon My Man’ and the ‘Yehudim’ song, ‘If you go, take me with you, listen, it’s me’, which Ya’ara had requested, and a series of Bruce Springsteen songs that Churchill had asked for, which drew a few representatives of our parents’ generation onto the floor, but they took off as fast as they could the minute the trance started. I’m not usually too crazy about that kind of music, but that night, when Ya’ara kicked off her high heels and began dancing in front of me, occasionally whipping me with her hair, I couldn’t help being carried away into it, feeling the heartbeats of the music competing with my own heartbeats, closing my eyes, not to think, to forget where I was, for a few minutes to be only rhythm, rhythm, rhythm, rhythm –

When I opened my eyes, Ilana the Weeper was dancing in front of me. For a moment, I wasn’t sure whether I was hallucinating or not. Most of the time when we went out dancing, she didn’t come along, and if by chance she found herself at a party, she would sit self-consciously on the side till Amichai took pity on her and left us, with an apologetic look, to take her home.

At the wedding, she didn’t dance at first either. She sat alone at the friends’ table, picking up cheesecake crumbs with the pads of her fingers. And thought how much she hated that music. And thought she wanted to go home. To her children, to her research. And thought: why did Amichai insist on coming with one car? She sat alone at the friends’ table and no one went over to her because we were all used to the way she was at parties. But Maria wasn’t used to it. She went and sat down beside her, close. And asked her about the people who were sitting at the table next to them. And Ilana the Weeper told her all the relevant gossip down to the smallest detail. Her tone was still bitter as she spoke, but her posture was a bit less droopy. Then Maria said, I’m a bit shy about dancing on my own out there with the guys, will you come with me? And Ilana the Weeper said, no, I don’t think so. And Maria put her hand gently on Ilana’s arm and said, maybe just this once, for me?

*

It’s funny how certain images remain burned in your mind.